News Corp Sites to Go Off Google in Months
News Corp Sites to Go Off Google in Months
Posted 11/13/2009 at 12:51pm
| by Bart Salisbury
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The pay-to-play debate for online media content heated up a bit with the announcement by News Corp. that Rupert Murdoch was reading to pull the plug on Google’s access to its online content. Jonathan Miller, the chief digital officer of News Corp. told the Monaco Media Forum “We believe that the value of high quality content is not recognized online so something needs to happen.” That something, according to Miller, will not happen right away, but in “months or quarters.”
Murdoch has long made it known that he deserves compensation for the content he provides online, and is actively pursuing ways to generate revenue more directly than advertising. The Wall Street Journal, for example, requires paid subscription for full access (although there are ways around this). However, the online market hasn’t been kind to those who put up such barriers. Apparently Murdoch believes that a leader is needed to make the first bold move, after which others will follow. “We will lead. There is a pent up need for this,” said Miller. There is also a pent up need for News Corp. to get its hands on a bit of the advertising revenue Google’s search engines generate, and which News Corp doesn’t share in.
Miller was dismissive of Google’s importance, at least for the News Corp.: “The traffic which comes in from Google brings a consumer who more often than not read one article and then leaves the site. That is the least valuable of traffic to us… the economic impact is not as great as you might think. You can survive without it.”
Google’s response was as expected: “Publishers put their content on the web because they want it to be found, so very few choose not to include their material in Google News and web search. But if they tell us not to include it, we don't.”
Whether News Corp can survive without Google is a question only pulling the plug will answer. It remains to be seen if News Corp. will follow through on their threat.
Image Credit: World Economic Forum/Wikipedia Commons
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roninnder
May 19, 2010 at 2:51am
Oh no, now where will I go to find unreadable, ridiculously biased, Liberal-slandering Right-Wing propaganda when I need it? Looks like that DNS block I set up to keep my kids out of those kind of sites can be removed since they will be effectively non-existant now.
peapatchisland
November 13, 2009 at 9:25pm
you have to wonder if all the pundits and powerfigures on the political right are thinking this is a bad move. NewsCorp basically represents most of the conservative/right news media sources. The two biggest ones being FoxNews and the Wall Street Journal. how is the political right gonna benefit from having all their news and spin-pieces blocked off from Google and other major news gathering sites ? how are they gonna influence people out there who aren't already part of their political belief system if you have to pay for their material ?
Very foolish move. Murdoch and NewsCorp need to learn that new rules and playground called the Net and Google. They are basically setting themselves up to be marginalized or too lose money in the long run.
LVmonkey
November 15, 2009 at 3:41pm
It may improve the quality of journalism... or am I getting to hopeful?
xs0u1x
November 13, 2009 at 4:10pm
I can't help but notice that rupert murdoch looks like the bastard offspring of kim jong-il and elmer fudd.
Member2600
November 13, 2009 at 2:26pm
cant wait to do a google search for "News corp news" and yeild nothing.!
bandeezee
November 13, 2009 at 2:00pm
He'll see how many less readers he will have if he cuts Google out. Someone probably has a better understanding of this than I do, but it seems like The Wall Street Journal has a pretty good strategy going. Tease them with a small blip of the article that they can still find on Google, but if they want to be able to read the entire thing they need to pay. Of course, like the article stated, there are ways around that, but there's always going people that find a way around it. This just seems to be the best strategy to me. Please respond if you disagree or just have a comment.
gendoikari1
November 13, 2009 at 1:24pm
Well, the average veracity of Internet news will shoot up rapidly in the next few months...
nekollx
November 13, 2009 at 1:06pm
Who Corp?
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